The former world champion was only 13th quickest in his first official session for Ducati, 2.1 seconds slower than his dominant team-mate Casey Stoner, having been forced to use his spare bike.
"Today wasn't a great day," Hayden admitted. "To start with I had a problem with a sensor on my first bike and I had to come back after just three laps of my first run and change to my second bike.
"The set-up wasn't the same and the clutch wasn't quite right. The 45 minutes flew by and we weren't able to get back on the pace we set here in the test."
He admitted that he would have to use both Saturday morning practice and qualifying to fine-tune his Ducati, but is optimistic that he can still be in the thick of the fight for the top five places.
"Obviously I'm going to need both sessions tomorrow to work something out and get on the pace," said Hayden.
"Casey and Valentino (Rossi) are already looking really quick but we're not too far off the group behind them. Hopefully with the right changes to the bike tomorrow we can get amongst them."
Stoner had a much more serene time on the lead Ducati, controlling the session throughout.
"We've made a good start today and I'm happy because the bike feeling was really good straight away," he said. "The settings we brought from Jerez seem to be working well here too.
"We still need to change a couple of things to get more grip from the rear. A lot of that is due to the track conditions being really dusty but we just need to take our time and try to get it set up better for tomorrow."
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